Page 683 - GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Great Expectations

beach, to rub their own hands and shake everybody else’s,
and sing ‘Fill, fill!’ A certain dark-complexioned Swab,
however, who wouldn’t fill, or do anything else that was
proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by

the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed
to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties;
which was so effectually done (the Swab family having
considerable political influence) that it took half the
evening to set things right, and then it was only brought
about through an honest little grocer with a white hat,
black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a
gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking
everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he
couldn’t confute with what he had overheard. This led to
Mr. Wopsle’s (who had never been heard of before)
coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of
great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the
Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had
brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight
acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain,
unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on
the Jack, and then cheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle
as Your Honour, solicited permission to take him by the
fin. Mr. Wopsle conceding his fin with a gracious dignity,

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